The Icelandic population is expected to grow from 338 to 452.000 persons in the next 50 years, according to Statistics Iceland, the centre for official statistics in Iceland.
452.000 is the medium projection variant, which takes both migration and natural increase to account. The high variant predicts 531.000 while the low variant projects 367.000, with all of them being based on different assumptions about economic growth, fertility and migration levels.
According to projections, life expectancy for both women and men will continue to grow, as the number of births per year will exceed the number of deaths per year, for both high and medium variants. Specifically, girls born in the year 2066 can expect to be 88.6 years old and boys 84.4, while the current life expectancy in Iceland is 83.8 years for women and 79.7 for men.
Statistics Iceland predicts an ageing population, with a rather slow growth, although the nation is expected to be younger than most European countries. More than a third of people in European nations will be over 65-years-old in 2060, while the same goes for a quarter of Iceland‘s population.
